In 'Liberal Christian' circles - which include most of the leadership of most of the largest and most powerful Christian churches it is a high status action to express, to discuss and elaborate, one's 'doubts' about Christianity - for example doubts about theology, doctrines and ethics; about the nature and reality of God, the divinity of Christ, the truth of miracles, prophecies, the Virgin Birth; the truth of the Bible and the meaning of key passages (especially relating to sex and sexuality)...

High ranking Christian leaders are eager to describe their doubts about such matters; and such doubts are status-enhancing in The World.

But to discuss doubts concerning the core tenets of modern Mainstream Leftist Politics is a strict taboo - such doubts are status-threatening in The World, and they are avoided.

So we do not hear mainstream Christian leaders expressing doubts about the value of the abolition of slavery, we do not hear them discussing racial differences, we do not hear them challenge the value of overseas aid - or describe its multiply destructive effects, nor do they question the validity of policies aimed at promoting multiculturalism and 'diversity'; nor do they even dissent from the official doctrines concerning the theory that anthropogenic carbon dioxide is (for sure) going to cause net-harmful global warming - but that this outcome can be prevented by immediate international pluvial action: this theory is regarded, in practice, by high status powerful Christian leaders - as an undeniable fact of life: far less open-to-doubt than the divinity of Christ.

(Leftism is, I believe, fundamentally anti-Christian. Nonetheless, given that all political
views are highly imperfect, distorted, simplistic, pragmatic phenomena -
it certainly is possible to be a Leftist and a real Christian - so long
as it is the Leftism that is contingent and doubtful - not the Christianity.).

The reason for this behaviour of Christian leaders isn't complex nor difficult to understand - it is simply that these leaders are not fundamentally Christians; but instead their fundamental belief is in Leftist politics. They are solid socialists who are Christianized (to a greater or lesser extent), but not solid Christians.

We know this because they doubt Christianity, but they do not doubt Leftism. They are 'tolerant' (which means they do not care) about Christian heresy, apostasy, or decline, or imminent extinction in The West; but they are zealous and fanatical Leftists who try their hardest to prevent political dissent among their ranks: membership of 'right wing' parties or advocacy of anti-Left policies is not tolerated, and is excoriated from the highest levels; and is either explicitly forbidden (eg membership of some legal political parties is grounds for non-appointment or dismissal), or else such people are covertly sanctioned and excluded.

Leftism is the main enemy of Christianity. but this is not because the political Right is correct; it is because the majority of self-identified Christians - and almost all the leadership - are dishonestly fundamentalist Leftist activists whose Christianity is a fake and a lie.

Whether mainstream self-identified-Christian leaders themselves acknowledge or deny this fact concerning their fundamental beliefs and their contingent beliefs is neither here nor there, it is unambiguously and undeniably revealed by their preferences and actions - most clearly by the nature of their doubts.

Sunday, 29 November 2015

People often, quite reasonably, find it bizarre and puzzling that humans do not get a lot more in the way of supernatural help in life.

If, as many Christians believe, the main aim in life really is salvation - i.e. to be saved from a default state of damnation - then it seems reasonable to suppose that the more supernatural help people have, the better it would be; and that all possible threats to salvation should be intercepted by supernatural aid; whether direct from God the Father, Jesus Christ or the Holy Ghost - or via the work of angels.

If salvation really is the goal of life, then life can be seen metaphorically as a rescue - helping people out of a pit; or as preventing people from falling back into a pit once they have climbed-out - and if the pit is seen as a place of eternal torment and misery, it seems hard to understand why supernatural assistance in escaping or avoiding an (unfenced) pit would not be obvious and abundant.

And the fact that most Christians do not experience moment by moment (nor even day by day) help from supernatural interventions, even when damnation is threatened, is apparently explicable (assuming that God is Good) only on the basis that people do not deserve to have help (i.e. some version of the doctrine of original sin).

But if, alternatively, salvation is seen as already having been given by the work of Christ (importantly, on condition that we accept this gift, via repentance - which of course does not-at-all-always happen; so salvation is not universal); then mortal life is seen as a matter of spiritual development.

[Spiritual development or progression is also called sanctification (becoming more saint-like), theosis (becoming more God-like), or divinization (developing our potentially divine nature to higher levels).]

If mortal life as seen (as I personally see it) as primarily about spiritual development, and since the human spirit is (for Christians) a free agent, capable of choice and learning; then an educational (not rescue) metaphor applies to mortal life. Mortal life becomes analogous to an apprenticeship or a school or college - in which the goal is to develop an advanced skill.

By such an account, supernatural agents are like the teachers - and the task is for them to bring the apprentices or students to an extremely high level of skill - ultimately equalling and potentially surpassing their own.

For such an ideal teacher, there is such a thing as excessive intervention, of teaching too much and in too specific a detail. (And by analogy, there is such a thing as too much supernatural intervention.)

The ideal teacher does not want mere obedience to a set of rules and practices; the ideal teacher wants to use the student's inner motivation to develop his ability to evaluate the situation, to make decisions and implement them, and then to evaluate the outcome to judge what further changes may be needed. In sum the student must take responsibility for his own learning - and this will not happen is the teacher is continually 'breathing down the neck' of the student.

So a wise teacher of a motivated pianist will aim to point-out only those technical errors that are dead-ends or will lead to problems in the future. Th teacher will not try to dictate all decisions all the time.

Thus the good teacher does not aspire to sit continuously with his pupil correcting and intervening every few seconds; but to give specific and concentrated and intermittent guidance - and then have the student go-off to grapple with the problem in his own way and as best he may. The ratio of explicit teaching to individual grappling with problems (aka 'practice') is very small - maybe one hour of teaching to dozens of hours of solo practice.

This, in a nutshell, is why most of us do not experience continuous, nor even frequent, divine guidance in our lives - because the main thing in life is our individual taking of responsibility for our lives - grappling, making mistakes, then detecting and trying to correct them; then moving on (and up) to repeat the process in (never ending) cycles of ascent and progression.

The best way to learn, probably the only way truly to learn; is for the student to grapple with and solve problems for himself, including making mistakes - because that kind of learning is deep, it is primary; and it enables the student to take over and teach himself - and to become an autonomous agent.

The best way for Man to live his mortal life, probably the only way for Man to live as a Man; is for him to grapple with and solve problems for himself , including making mistakes. That is the path of theosis.

Some supernatural intervention is helpful, and sometimes it is essential - when someone is making the same mistake over and over again; or when someone is headed-off down a blind alley, or into disaster.

But, as with a piano pupil, all teaching must voluntarily be accepted and embraced by the student if it is to be effective. Teaching which is coercively-imposed is, indeed, an impossiblity - since Men just are by their nature autonomus agents with free will.

Since we are - at this stage - weak creatures; we nearly always want and ask for more help, more divine assistance, than is good for us. College students mostly want to get 'detailed feedback' on their essays, which amounts to telling them exactly 'how to get high marks' if they only obey the instructions, and copy-out the advice.

But what such students want is not what is good for them, nor is it effective in building ability. What they need is to work from genuine motivation (and if this is lacking, then nothing genuine can be done); to grapple with the problems, and evaluate the reasons for imperfections and failures of their own work; to understand what went wrong, and try again. Ideally, students may learn the skills, and may become self-teachers - and then potentially teachers of others.

This, I think, is why Christians do not receive very-frequent or obvious supernatural help; because if we are indeed living this life mostly for reasons of spiritual progression, then it would be bad for us (harmful) to be in a situation of merely doing what God (or the angels) told us to do at a minute and moment by moment level.

For then we would not be learning, we would indeed be learning not-to-learn.

We know (and this is faith, and explains why faith is essential) that God is Good and Loves us as individual persons and as Men - so the basic set-up of life must be for our benefit.

We have been given general rules of how to proceed; and we have the assurance that when help is really helpful - if we ask, it will certainly be given.

But if we ask for 'help' and it is not given; then there are Good and Loving reasons (which we probably will not understand exactly, at our stage in development - just as a junior apprentice may not understand why his Master forbids him some kind of superficially effective technique that will lead to trouble later) why this kind of help, at this time, would actually be harmful to us.

Thus, understanding our mortal life as primarily about spiritual development (rather than focused on salvation) may help us to clarify the nature of genuinely-hepful supernatural assistance that we can expect and will happen when requested; and that kind of pseudo-helpful but actually-harmful interference that we should not expect and will not happen.

It is a matter of the difference, familiar to all real teachers, of distinguishing between what the student wants versus what the student needs.

Note added: The above is a frame, by-which and through-which to understand life. It is, in other words, a metaphysical system. For a Christian, this metaphysical system is not arbitrary but a reasonable - not inevitable - consequence of the basic and essential Christian belief in the Goodness and personal love of God, and its implications for this life on the assumption that it was set up by our loving God and for our ultimate good. As such, it cannot be challenged by specific pieces of evidence - metaphysics just is not challenged by specific pieces of evidence, because it frames the evidence, and makes sense of, gives meaning, to evidence. If you do suppose that you are indeed judging a metaphysical system by specific pieces of evidence, then you are making a rational-error; and actually merely using a different metaphysical system but without being aware of it. A metaphysical system can only properly be judged by comparison with another metaphysical system; and to do this, you must become aware 1. that you have metaphysical beliefs, 2. what these are; and 3. that these beliefs are not inevitable but are a choice (although not necessarily, nor usually, a conscious choice).

Friday, 27 November 2015

Physicist David Deutsch explains why probability is an abstract model that may be useful for some practical purposes - but is not found in real life, and does not explain anything.
**

The awful secret at the heart of probability theory is that physical events either happen or they don’t: there’s no such thing in nature as probably happening. Probability statements aren’t factual assertions at all.The theory of probability as a whole is irretrievably “normative”: it says what ought to happen in certain circumstances and then presents us with a set of instructions. It is normative because it commands that very high probabilities, such as “the probability of x is near 1″, should be treated almost as if they were “x will happen”. But such a normative rule has no place in a scientific theory, especially not in physics. “There was a 99 per cent chance of sunny weather yesterday” does not mean “It was sunny”.
… Probability and associated ideas such as randomness didn’t originally have any deep scientific purpose. They were invented in the 16th and 17th centuries by people who wanted to win money at games of chance.
To discover the best strategies for playing such games, they modelled them mathematically. True games of chance are driven by chancy physical processes such as throwing dice or shuffling cards. These have to be unpredictable (having no known pattern) yet equitable (not favouring any player over another).
…Before game theory, mathematics could not yet accommodate an unpredictable, equitable sequence of numbers, so game theorists had to invent mathematical randomness and probability. They analysed games as if the chancy elements were generated by “randomisers”: abstract devices generating random sequences, with uniform probability. [But...] no finite sequence can be truly random. To expect fairly tossed dice to be less likely to come up with a double after a long sequence of doubles is a falsehood known as the gambler’s fallacy. But if you know that a finite sequence is equitable – it has an equal number of 1s and 0s, say – then towards the end, knowing what came before does make it easier to predict what must come next.A second objection is that because classical physics is deterministic, no classical mechanism can generate a truly random sequence.
So why did game theory work? …The key is that in all of these applications, randomness is a very large sledgehammer used to crack the egg of modelling fair dice, or Brownian jiggling with no particular pattern, or mutations with no intentional design. The conditions that are required to model these situations are awkward to express mathematically, whereas the condition of randomness is easy, given probability theory.
It is unphysical and far too strong, but no matter.
[However…], you could conceive of Earth as being literally flat, as people once did, and that falsehood might never adversely affect you. But it would also be quite capable of destroying our entire species, because it is incompatible with developing technology to avert, say, asteroid strikes.
Similarly, conceiving of the world as being literally probabilistic may not prevent you from developing quantum technology. But because the world isn’t probabilistic, it could well prevent you from developing a successor to quantum theory…
It is easy to accept that probability is part of the world, just as it’s easy to imagine Earth as flat when in your garden. But this is no guide to what the world is really like, and what the laws of nature actually are.

**
This means that the old chestnut used to check understanding of probability theory - of asking whether having thrown twelve 'heads' with a coin, the next throw of the dice is therefore more likely to come-up heads - is therefore misleading in practice and only true axiomatically. The supposed answer is that even after twelve heads the next throw is equally likely to come-up tails is only correct in terms of a model that this is true-by-assumption.

In real life, a dice that came up heads twelve times in a row, should usually be assumed to be non-random - so (unless the dice is being controlled specifically in order to trick you!) it is wise to assume that the next throw is more likely to come up heads than tails...

In general terms, randomness is just (part of) a model - and whether that model is true-to-life is a question of science - not of mathematics.

Some models can reasonably be termed an 'explanation' of a phenomenon - but models containing probability statements cannot.

I think it is fair to say that many or most statisticians fail to understand this; and that it undercuts many of the assumptions governing modern 'evidence-based' policy.

Mainstream Christianity has proved to be extremely vulnerable to the sexual revolution over the past century or so - indeed, the sexual revolution has all-but eliminated Christianity from public discourse in The West, reduced the main Christianity churches to servile impotence - and the destruction continues.

Why should this be? My guess is that many people cannot perceive see any solid link between the topic of sex and the necessities of Christian faith - and the mainstream churches have been unable to explain any link in a way that was comprehensible and convincing.

Traditional Christianity in The West was mostly organized around an attitude that was anti-sex - or was felt to be anti-sex by those who lived under it. The highest Christians were celibate monks and priests in Catholic countries; but everywhere sex was not so much a matter of there being lots of things forbidden (although they were) as that only a very few sexual expressions were permitted.

These rules were presented as divine laws: and not so much explained, as simply enforced.

The problem, I think, is that while people mostly obeyed these laws; they could not understand the link between sexual activities and the Universe as described by Christianity.

There just did not seem to be any comprehensible connection between the Big Picture of God's creation of the Universe and his plans for the salvation of Men on the one hand - and the minutiae of what individual humans did in their tiny minds and feeble bodies: and their sex organs specifically.

The feeling was: why on earth should God care about what I do 'in the privacy of my bedroom'? - or indeed anywhere else? The feeling: what possible difference could my 'doings' make to the Universe as a whole?

Once there was a possibility of sex without babies; sex seemed such a small and temporary thing that it was difficult to see any significant role for it within the scope of the Universe; and mainstream Christianity was only able to provide very indirect, unconvincing and indeed mostly incomprehensible explanations to link sex and God's universe.

This was because Christianity has generally been felt as a spiritual, not a bodily thing; and God Himself was a spiritual and disembodied creator. Men and women were created from nothing, sex was presumed to be absent for the eternity after death - and in general sex was just a temporary and non-vital expedient during the short period of (fallen, sin-full) life on earth

It is a strength of Mormon theology that the significance, the vital importance, the Goodness of sex in the universe is clear in terms of the underlying metaphysics; which is itself clearly expressible as a simple story: that men and women are literal children of an incarnate Heavenly Father and Mother; and our main task on earth is to marry, have children and lead Christian lives primarily organized around families; eternal life after death is organized according to families; and the highest human destiny includes (eventually...) for a man and woman in celestial marriage to become divine parents.

This means that the very fundamentals of Mormon Christianity have built-in sexual relationships, sexual difference and relationships go up to the highest level.

And the vital importance of sex to the Christian Universe is clear even to a child - and without the necessity for long, abstract and philosophical explanation.

There is, to put it mildly, considerable inconsistency about the way that those with power claim to predict - or 'predict the future' as the common pleonasm has it.

But perhaps adding 'the future' to the phrase is not redundant - considering that climate change 'predictions' are actually based wholly on the past.

When Global Warming advocates claim improved prediction, what they really mean is that they have a new (CO2 based) mathematical model that more precisely describes past data, what already has happened before the 'prediction' was made; and none of the climate claim predictions have actually been tested against what was supposed to happen after the prediction was made.

In other words, the climate change activists are using a specialist, technical and statistical definition of prediction in a general, public and media context where it will certainly be misunderstood.

Also, I know from experience as a professional epidemiologist, that there are plenty of statisticians who themselves do not understand the importance of this distinction between modelling what did happen, and hypothetical models that claim to predict what will happen.

Such gross errors are common and usually remain uncorrected in a world where scientists are ever more numerous and of ever lower ability and relevant experience; and where researchers are not even trying to tell the truth, and where all the significant incentives are in the direction of exaggerated claims. For several decades now, the mass of professional science just is, and is just, about funding, publishing, impact, peer status - and truthfulness is neither discussed nor evaluated.

The modern state and mainstream media opinion are, to put it mildly, inconsistent when it comes to prediction.

The discussions about claims of global climate change, and the common - and usually accepted - claims of groups to be able to predict future climate and to be able to control future climate, are instances where predictions are not just accepted, but enforced and acted-upon to the tune of trillions of dollars of international funding and regulations - despite the an almost complete lack of tested knowledge concerning a process of truly immense complexity.

In other words, mainstream opinion accepts some gigantic claims to predict the unknown and unpredictable - and does not just accept these massively-implausible claims of exact predictive knowledge, but regards those who do not accept these speculative knowledge claims as actively evil or grossly dumb.

Yet on the other hand, I have been on an inside participant in several political correctness witchhunts - either concerning myself or friends and colleagues - in which 'hate facts', or taboo knowledge, was the focus; and the standard of proof required was insane and impossible.

For example, back in 2008 I wrote a magazine article that accepted a century's worth of completelyun-contradicted evidence of social class differences in intelligence to model the effect of university selectivity on the differential rate of social class acceptance (to show why it was that highly selective colleges with an assumed unbaised admissions system would be predicted to accept a much lower proportion of working class students than was present in the national population).

Yet the baseline claim of social class differences in intelligence being predictive of a mismatch in class acceptance rates at elite colleges - which is a very simple and straightforward claim compared to the morass of uncertainties and interactions involved in global climate, and which is supported by many hundreds of papers over many decades and refuted by not one single paper - was treated by university administrators, the mass media and politicians as an utterly outrageous, and therefore clearly malicious assertion.

When a politically correct taboo is broken, suddenly it becomes normal, acceptable and irrefutable to assert that this act of taboo-breaking will have catastrophic effects.

Suddenly, all the uncertainties of prediction are used first to allow wild speculation about what might or could happen... and then to treat such 'what if?' assertions as if they were true, plausible and indeed likely.

It is impossible to exaggerate the degree of exaggeration! One person saying one sentence - or even one word - is treated as if there was a strict knowledge of causal linkages that can and will lead to seismic social damage. And treated as if that seismic damage was the intent, and that the perpetrator would be 'to blame'.

In effect, the rulers of modern societies - i.e. mass media and the linked bureaucracies of major social systems - behave as if they are capable of making precise and valid predictions concerning the effect of specific words and phrases and events on the minds and actions of millions of people.

The implicit claim is that we have a highly precise predictive knowledge of how discrete and specific phenomena effect the emotions and cognitions of vast numbers of people. The claim is that we posses an exact-science of prediction of mass behaviour.

Why?

The reason for such absurd claims is simply that they are the basis of modern morality - which is utilitarian.

If moral goodness is supposed to be based on promotion of human happiness and the reduction of human suffering, and if such goals are assumed to be the basis of legitimate moral action by social rulers, then it must be possible to predict the effect of a word, phrase or image on the hearts and minds and behaviours of millions of people.

I am not saying that this type of prediction is possible - very clearly it is not possible, and there is zero reason to assume that it is possible - but I am saying that secular rulers must act as if it is possible: must act as if they understood what makes the mass of people (or those people they regard as important) happy or sad, angry or contented, motivated or despairing.

It is a lie, and it is a ridiculous lie - but since all legitimacy in the modern secular state, institution and corporation depends on this lie being true: then the ridiculous lie is treated as true; and enforced as true.

So prediction in modern secular societies has nothing at allto do with the ability to predict - but especially not the ability to 'predict the future'.

Wednesday, 25 November 2015

Edited and adapted from several pages of the chapter "Religion" in Saving the Appearances - a study in idolatry by Owen Barfield, published 1957.

It is in the nature of the case that if, at any point in time, a new moral demand is made upon humanity, then moral judgements will grow for a time double and confused. I spoke earlier of symptoms of 'iconoclasm', meaning a new willingness to apprehend life symbolically instead of literally; and I now maintain that these have a moral significance, and indeed a paramount moral significance for the present times. Yet this does not correspond with the generally accepted scale of Christian moral values, but appears to cut right across it. There are plenty of people with a natural taste for dream psychology, symbolical art and literature, sacramentalism in religion and other things whose meaning cannot be grasped without a movement of the imagination. And many of these people are arrogant, self-centred and in other way immoral. Conversely, there are practical, humdrum, literal souls before whose courage and goodness we are abashed. It is not a happy task to maintain that, from one point of view, and that an all-important one, the former must be accounted morally superior - because they posses the one thing needful which the other lack. Because the 'needful' virtue is the one that combats the besetting sin. And the besetting sin today is the sin of literalness or idolatry - of experiencing the phenomena of the world as objects in their own right - independently of human consciousness. The relationship between the mind and heart of man is a delicate mystery, and hardness is catching. I believe it will be found that there is a valid connection between literalness and a certain hardness of heart. This is rooted in avoidance of self-knowledge and a determination to adhere to existent idolatry. On the positive side a certain humble, tender receptiveness of heart is nourished by a deep and deepening imagination and by the self knowledge which that inevitably involves.

In the sixty years since this passage was written I think its deep truth has become apparent. Literalism in Christianity has persisted and has been largely defeated by the literalism of secular mainstream culture.

Attempts to evolve a more 'symbolic' Christianity have been mostly insincere - typically a stalking horse behind-which liberalism was advanced, with a covert agenda of allowing conformity with secular morality (especially in relation to the sexual revolution).

In essence, we have had sixty years of Secular literalism slugging it out with Christian literalism. An ever more atheistic, and anti-Christian, public sphere has demanded a literalist response to its criticisms - then reacted with horror and disdain to the literalistic perspective that it elicited. Secularism sees Christianity as nothing more than a list of detached knowledge claims, rules, prohibitions and demands on human behaviour - and finds this version of Christianity to be absurd, dull, arbitrary and indeed appalling in its harshness.

And on the other side, those Christians who have resisted the mass trend into apostasy by a strict and stubborn adherence to legalistic definitions (e.g. Biblical inerrancy, an emphasis on obedience to priestly authority, rigid adherence to forms and rituals) have too often fallen victim to that hardness of heart that Barfield sees as a consequence of literalism.

There is indeed a beady-eyed and punitive fanaticism evident in the discourse of too many traditionalist and conservative Christians.

I think Barfield is correct in his overall diagnosis that literalism is a dead-end - and man must move forward to a new and more engaged relationship with the world: neither the immersive acceptance of the past, nor the manipulative nihilism of the present - but a view that feels each of us to be a participant in a web of family-like relationships that embrace not only God, and other people, but all things.

In sum - the way I interpret this passage is in terms of my musings on the deep metaphysical problem of modernity.

So long as we adhere to our nihilistic metaphysical assumptions - even Christianity will usually be neutralized; because Christianity will be distorted, drained, and sucked into an irresistible whirlpool of legalism, hard-heartedness and de facto hatred by the cold, dead-ly, meaning-and-purpose-destroying nature of its literalistic, idolatrous metaphysical underpinnings.

Because if our metaphysics presupposes that we are merely an isolated consciousness inhabiting a dead and indifferent universe the reality of any of which we cannot be sure-of - then doubt will feed on doubt until faith becomes merely a proud, indifferent and arbitrary zeal.

(At least, this is what I fear - that secularism will triumph because it has infected Christian thought so deeply that its presuppositions are undetected, or falsely taken to be logically necessary.)

It is surprising to me how many highly successful UK careerists I have known within medicine, science and academia - and I know a lot more at one remove (i.e. via a friend who knows them).

By 'successful' I mean those who have been 'honoured' through the British Honours System of (in ascending order) medals (e.g. MBE, OBE, CBE), Knighthoods (Sirs and Dames) and Peerages (Lords and Ladys).

If this is the kind of success you wish for, and you are able and hard-working (and able to tolerate vast swathes of tedium) it is clear that the most successful plan is likely to be The Saruman Strategy.

This could equally be called the Fifth Column (i.e. the enemy already within the gates), the Quisling or the Vichy (Petain) strategy (the last two named for successful Nazi collaborationists in Norway and France).

The basic plan is simple - although not easy: become eminent in a social system such as medicine, science, education, law, the church, the police or military - and then subvert it to allow for managerial take-over with a politically correct agenda.

In sum it is the strategy of treason and betrayal for self-gain.

(Note: It used to be possible for British people to get honours by being good at their work - but that has become very difficult and rare - and is extremely slow compared with the Saruman Strategy. For example James D Watson was eventually knighted - honorary KBE - but more than half a century after he discovered the structure of DNA!)

So most modern honours are awarded for betrayal and treason.

But how do the honoured people justify this to themselves? By exactly the same rationale as drove Vidkun Quisling and Marshal Petain (not to mention Saruman) - that is to say by arguing:

1. Defeat is inevitable - therefore:.

2. Early capitulation will cause the least damage to 'our' nation/ institution/ profession (and I personally will undertake to manage it so as to cause the minimum of disruption).

Of course, defeat only becomes inevitable because of the multitude of Sarumans.

However, given the over-supply of Sarumans in the modern West, the canny strategy is: If you can't beat them, you might as well join them - and make the best of things.

And in a nihilistic post-Christian society, that argument is the ultimate conceivable bottom-line - hence utterly compelling.

Different Christians have different (valid) answers to the 'problem of pain' or human suffering, or evil - and each sincere and knowledgeable answer captures or highlights something of the truth; but not all of it - since that is the nature of answers.

(After all, how could anybody capture the whole truth in just one short sentence? The idea is absurd. And having written or uttered a sentence, how would be be sure that everybody understood it correctly?)

And there does not need to be one single cause of evil and suffering in the world.

There is the free will of men; the purposive Good-destructive evil of Satan and his minions (which themselves need explaining); the limitations - some logical and practical, other perhaps fundamental - on God's power and influence; the indifference (or hostility) of the 'non-living' world (e.g. natural disasters). And so on.

But at the bottom of it all is the fact, that ought to be blindingly obvious to anyone who understands enough about Christianity to become one, that nobody who knew anything about Christianity ever claimed that Christianity was about producing perfect or even optimal happiness in this mortal life on earth.

Surely it is crystal clear? (even to an Archbishop) that Christianity is about our happiness in the eternity after death and resurrection?

(Our happiness is this world is indeed affected by Christianity - very much so. But the degree to which perfect happiness is created - measured, as it will be, by existant, labile, partly corrupt evaluations - is not a measure of the validity of Christianity; nor is the failure of Christian belief to create perfect earthly happiness a refutation of its validity!)

This world and our mortal life is extremely important - and it is not merely 'a means to an end' - but surely the voices of the New Testament are unamimous and unambiguous that the Christian importance of mortal life is not about God making mortal earthly life maximally happy and eliminating pain and suffering on condition of belief...

Where (on earth) did people get that idea? Not from the Bible! That idea just is not a part of the message.

The provenance of the made-up notion that Christainity, if it were valid, would eliminate pain and suffering from the world is surely demonic, not divine.

This idea of suffering being a threat to the validity of Christianity is a pseudo-problem, falsely framed.

Which is why, having accepted this frame, the question cannot ever satisfactorily be disposed-of - 'doubts' induced by the sufferings of mortal life lead, not to answers, but to to more-doubts - and to the erosion of faith.

Which is not an accident.

We do indeed often seek an explanation of pain and suffering - and we may or may not find it (the reason is likely being personal to the seeker and specific to the cause - typically, general reasons will not satisfy us) - however our failure to understand the reason or meaning or causes for specific sufferings has nothing to do with the truth of Christianity (it is 'orthogonal') - this just is not a reason for 'doubts'.

The valid domain of consideration that may (sometimes, for some people) be induced by the existence of extreme pain and suffering and evil in this mortal life, is an enquiry concerning the relationship between God's Goodness and His Power.

Christians have been told unambiguously that God is wholly Good; also that he is the creator and the most powerful of 'god's. To understand evil and suffering some people need a satisfying general explanation of how these divine attributes might fit-together.

And any explanation must start either with God's Goodness, or with his power. Which divine attribute you start-with (and this is a metaphysical assumption that probably should be based on interpretation of divine revelation) determines the range of possible answers you will end-up-with.

But none of this is to do with the validity of Christianity supposedly being challenged by the existence of suffering and evil. Our ancestors knew this - and their direct experience of suffering was, on average, far greater than our own.

However, our own experience of evil is greater than theirs. They knew, with considerable precision, what was Good. Yet we live in a world of moral inversion in the official arena of public discourse, a world of evil routinely and by high status persons propagandized as Good; and of Goodness depicted as evil - all this by communications (including everything from the arts and sciences to advertizing and public relations) whose reach and influence is (via the mass media) now almost all-pervading and universal.

And THAT fact of living inside an actively-evil world, is the reason why modern people have been duped into supposing it is valid to state that the sufferings of mortal life constitute as lethal challenge to Christianity.

The debate is itself a product of modern moral inversion.

Note: Thans to commenter Joel whose questioning provoked this very full response: I hope it satsifies him!

Monday, 23 November 2015

Aside from the fact that he is not a Christian (but merely a Christianized socialist) any doubts that any Christians may have had that Justin Welby is the most cognitively-mediocre man ever to head the Anglican communion (still the third largest Christian denomination in the world) have been dispelled by his latest musings communicated to the BBC (aka the UK Antichrist).http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-34893039Quotes from the Daily Telegraph:

Justin Welby said he was left asking why the attacks happened, and where God was in the French victims' time of need. He said he reacted with "profound sadness" at the events, particularly because he and his wife had lived in Paris.

Asked if these attacks had caused him to doubt where God is, he said: "Oh gosh, yes," and admitted it put a "chink in his armour.

He told BBC Songs Of Praise: "Yes. Saturday morning - I was out and as I was walking I was praying and saying: 'God why - why is this happening? Where are you in all this?' and then engaging and talking to God. Yes, I doubt."

The depths of theological ignorance, the feebleness and superficiality of the man's supposed faith are staggering - is he really unaware that things like this have happened rather a lot over the past two thousand years? Has he really not thought through this matter before?

Or is he perhaps dishonestly pretending to doubt, perhaps in order to help atheists identify with him or so as to fit-in with the secular Leftist mainstream? (The man is a multi-documented and calculating liar, after all.)

All in all, this is yet more evidence that the mainstream Christian church leadership in the West are strongly anti-Christian in net-effect (whatever their ignorant and foolish intentions may be).With so much apparently-authoritative misinformation and misrepresentation of Christianity in the public arena - we must assume that the mass majority of the Western populations are not just ignorant about the faith - but have an actively misleading pseudo-knowledge - something that is much harder to correct.

From reading, especially, Owen Barfield, and the selections-from and commentary of Goethe published by Jeremy Naydler, I have considerably enriched my understanding of the essence of science from the state it had reached when I published Not Even Trying: the corruption of real science.

http://corruption-of-science.blogspot.co.uk/

THE big problem for those trying to understand science has been the question of: Where do correct hypotheses come-from - given that there are an unbounded number of incorrect hypotheses. This does not entail assuming that correct hypotheses are either certain or complete (any hypotheses is almost-inevitably a shortened and selective model of reality) - merely that there are so many more ways of being wrong than right; and science could never get going if vast numbers of wrong hypotheses had to be eliminated with every step.

Upon this matter hinges almost the whole of science; because once good hypotheses are available, science becomes more-or-less a matter of applied routine (research and development, as it is called). But if god hypotheses are lacking, hen we either have nothing at all; or, as nowadays, we have fake science, pseudo-science, science that is not-even-trying to be truthful: a species of bureaucratic careerism which apes the superficial appearances of science but actually does nothing towards enhancing human understanding; except to expend resources, generate publications, and mislead in a thousand ways.

(By the standards of modern research evaluations, the more resources expended - e.g. grant income; and the more words generated - e.g. publications; and the more people who are misled by such lying profligacy - e.g the 'impact; the better will be the research evaluations, the higher the status and power. In these evaluations, 'truth' is never a variable.)

The origin of true hypotheses is not a question which can be answered by science itself - it is a meta-scientific question: that is, a philosophical question.

The uncannily prescience insight of Goethe was that true hypotheses come from the imagination of an individual scientist - constrained by a direct apprehension of phenomena.

Thus, a real scientist gives himself over to a consideration of the phenomenon in question; and after achieving a correct orientation, by means of this honest devotion, he may be rewarded by a direct understanding of reality.

This primary understanding is 'present' in the scientists own imagination - and is initially utterly private. The point at which it becomes public is when it is formulated as a general statement such as a theory or an hypothesis concerning the nature of reality.

But the public statement of the scientist's inner imagination understanding is inevitably a partial and biased summary of what is in his own imagination - therefore he may need (typically will need) to modify, and re-modify, that public statement - in light of his experience of how it is being understood, and in light of linking it to other phenomena (i.e. the 'evidence') in order to make it more validly representative of what is in his imagination.

(Furthermore, any specific hypothesis lies in relationship to many other hypotheses, which me be of various validities - and further modifications are likely to be necessary as these adjacent, and gradually more distant, hypothesis are clarified - thus even real science is usually in a dynamic state - but one that is utterly different from the fashionable whims of modern mainstream pseudo-science.)

Once this point of a public statement has been reached, then normal, routine, R&D type science can commence.

But this begs the question of how it is that the science may be able directly to 'intuit' directly the nature of reality? How is it that the scientist can apprehend phenomena directly?

The answer to this can only be metaphysical - and is usually religious. It presupposes that direct communication is possible to at-least a significant extent - i.e. communication which is not-merely a consequence of the set-up of the scientist's own sensory apparatus, brain apparatus, and in general 'subjectivity'. A communication that comes from the phenomena as it really is, and not 'merely' from the way that phenomena are framed by the dominant explanatory mode of a particular time and place.

In sum, the above explanation relies upon the possibility of objective knowledge - not merely in the weak sense of objectivity as 'publicly-agreed knowledge'; but in a strong sense of objectivity as 'corresponding with reality'.

By this account, we get a very different understanding of the nature of science, and the way that the 'success' of science contributes to our understanding of reality. This is not to be understood in terms of the 'power' of science (e.g. to generate transformative technologies, such as Western medicine and engineering). The real evidence of science is in terms of confirming the possibility of direct knowledge of reality via the imagination.

Remarkably, science - real science - emerges as being primarily an imaginative apprehension of reality - and evidence that such imagination is potentially truthful: objective.

It brings us back to the individual scientist and his devotion to his subject as the basis of that vast (and, now, mainly corrupt) superstructure which is the public, measurable, appearance of science.

It aligns science with poetry, and the other creative arts; and it breaks down the barrier between our conceptualizations of these aspects of creativity.

It also provides indirect evidence of order, design and purpose in the universe - in reality itself. And, even more significant, a role for Man - that Man is enabled to know this reality, is in a sense is made to know reality.

The scientist - that is, the primary and real scientist - is a man of intuition and imagination whose love of that which he contemplates is (or may be - this is not an algorithm, not a manageable 'protocol'!) rewarded by a direct and true apprehension concerning its reality.

NOTE: It should be emphasized that my understanding of these matters came mainly via Barfield and Naydler - but that the origin of these ideas is with Goethe and especially Rudolf Steiner. I have read probably some hundreds of thousands of words of Steiner, and can confidently confirm that he is indeed the true originator and developer of this perspective, building upon a relatively brief and preliminary account in Goethe - but I have seldom been able to discover this from Steiner directly, but rather by intermediary scholarship.

Sunday, 22 November 2015

I have recently twice had the experience of commencing a modern retelling of the King Arthur legends with enjoyment, only to abandon the story before the end due to a kind of revulsion at the gross psychological implausibility of the narrative turn.

The problem in both instances was that well-established characters, characters I had got-to-know, suddenly began behaving unnaturally, unbelievably, by tortured-logic - due to their actions being artificially shoe-horned into a pre-exiting plot shape.

The fault, in both cases, was that the authors had tried to stick to the shape of Thomas Malory's Morte d'Arthur (middle 1400s) - which (for all its excellences) is merely a compendium of diverse and originally separate legends, cobbled-together into a semi-coherent set of loosely-linked stories.

As indeed is the Arthurian story itself - apparently consisting of two separate strands of ancient legend - one about the prophet and wizard Merlin, and the other about a noble war leader and exemplary character called Arthur - probably based on real people, probably from different times and places of post-Roman Britain (from the 400s AD onwards).

These strands were brought together mainly by the genius of Geoffrey of Monmouth in the middle 1100s to make the basis of the Arthurian story. And these are the Arthurian elements which I love - especially those concerned with Merlin.

These are the British elements of the King Arthur story - the true 'Matter of Britain'.

The later additional French stuff about knights, chivalry, round tables, courtly love, the Lancelot/ Guinevere adultery, and the Grail Quest I find more-or-less repellent - although I can tolerate them if they are subordinated within the narrative.

(I find the Grail Quest a particularly horrible intrusion. It's hard to put my finger on why; but for me it gathers and concentrates many of the very worst aspects of medieval Christianity - exactly the kind of corruption and pathology masquerading as health and purity that helped keep me away from Christianity for so many decades.)

Of these later elements, that of courtly love is, for me, the worst. The business of knights 'serving' their ladies, wearing their favours, the stupid stuff about 'honour', courtesy and being held bound by a casual and unconsidered word to do some ridiculous or wicked thing...

Bah! it is Frenchified, decadent and anti-Christian (as made clear by the romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight from the late 1300s; in which these elements are a threat to the goodness and purity of Gawain, and his stubborn adherence to this courtly code is revealed as absurd and unworthy).

Consequently, from my perspective, all version of the Arthurian legends I have encountered (in movies, TV, novels and poems) are extremely imperfect and unsatisfactory works of art - through which something strong and important may shine.

In this my attitude seems to resemble that of JRR Tolkien - who, for all that he tried his hand at an extended Arthurian poem, had strong reservations about the thing as a whole, even as he responded powerfully to specific elements.

In sum, I wish that some more authors could put Malory behind them, and re-imagine the Merlin-Arthur aspects without the effete continental intrusions - to create a noble and psychologically plausible tale that taps into deep roots of British myth and the Christian impulse.

Saturday, 21 November 2015

It is a sad fact that baritones never attract the adulation of tenors, or even basses - and even sadder that, on the whole, this is just; since the baritone voice - while capable of great nobility and comedy - somehow does not reach the aesthetic summits of the more extremes of the male range.

However, I do have a number of favourite baritone voices - none more than the unjustly neglected Sherrill Milnes; who was master of Verdi's ferociously taxing baritone roles, with their exhausting high-lying tessitura (which Bernard Shaw regarded as something of something of a scandal, and voice-wrecker). He has in abundance that virile, athletic masculinity which the best baritone embodies.

Here is an exceptionally beautifual aria from Wagner's Tannhauser (when he still wrote arias) - and this is, I think, one of the loveliest tunes ever.

For those too impatient to wait through the delicious recitativo, the main aria starts at 2:45 -

Milnes was most famous for his astonishing high notes: he was capable of singing a B-flat - which is only one tone below the usual tenor maximum high note of C - yet he sang these ultra-high notes with a full and ringing baritone-tone. A stunning example comes at the very end of this:

This is a small and preliminary study, which I supervised as a student project; but the results were very clear and interesting - suggesting that further research along the same lines would be worthwhile:

It has been quite usual, since the self-styled 'Enlightenment' for Men to look back on previous generations with condescension at the childish misunderstandings and imaginary explanations. But there is nothing from history to compare with the blindness of modern Man - his inability to perceive the obvious - things he can see in front of him; and to deny obvious common sense.

This blindness is very general through society - probably we all exemplify some kinds of blindness, while being immune to others - but there is no doubt that modernity is in a crucial sense about this blindness - modernity is about making Men unable to perceive some things which used to be so clear that they required no emphasis or explanation, but were simply the basis of explanation.

And, as the Enlightenment makes clear, modernity is about assuming that such blindness is a virtue and mark or superiority - to be blind is to be better and wiser.

Most examples of gross blindness are to do with secular Leftism (political correctness) and almost all instances of modern blindness are inculcated by the mass media, or by official channels such as the educational or legal systems - they are about replacing the obvious perceptions and inferences with an abstract interpretation that renders them either invisible or else reverses their meaning.

Examples of blindness include the failure to perceive gross levels of dishonesty in, for example, the workplace, the legal system (nature and application of laws), educational evaluations and examinations; failure to see the gross and intentional ugliness of modern built environments; failure to recognize the wickedness-promoting and sin-denying and insanity-enforcing nature of policies and propaganda in relation to sex and sexuality, marriage and families.

The point is that modernity is now substantially about inculcating and enforcing such blindness - and one inference is that there is a lot more going on in the world than people notice - as can be seen by a comparison of modern writing with older writings. And, when we find discrepancies between the older and current world views, we can be almost certain that it is our current world view which is most at fault, least accurate, most fundamentally misguided.

If we can unveil our eyes and other senses and simply perceive... then a very, very different world comes into sight - a far richer, more meaningful and purposive world; a world capable of engaging us in a way this the mainstream world does not (and is indeed intended to prevent). It is suddenly obvious that most people, most of the time are selectively blind.

The modern world view is an artificially created abstraction compounded of images, interpretations and explanations, asserted imperatives... it is an interlocking whole, a web, that incorporates the mass media (primarily, as the major implicit validator) and also most of politics, law, public administration, modern 'science', 'medicine', 'religion' and indeed the realm of public discourse.

Because it is abstract it is arbitrary, and we are disengaged from it - at may (and does) command and indeed compel our attention; it controls us, it shapes our senses and our actions... but it does not satisfy.

Our participation is an addiction, not a thing with meaning or purpose - and we know this, but cannot break free. Just as so many people cannot break free from sexual relationships they know are pathological - they are trapped by the consequent prospect of loneliness and misery and boredom. So Modern man is addicted to the pathologies of the mass media, fashion, the official abstractions - and his Blindness is the price he pays - and it is this Blindness which keeps him enslaved so he cannot see the escape routes (into meaning purpose and real relationships) which are located all about him...

For all Modern man knows, he is surrounded by nature spirits, gods, angels and elves; by miracles and 'paranormal' phenomena and all manner of remarkable events; and is himself part of a grand and terrible destiny! - as our ancestors perceived.

Wednesday, 18 November 2015

Metaphysics refers to a person's understanding of and belief concerning the basic set-up of reality.

For example, which side a person assumes is real between the religious view of the universe being essentially purposive and meaningful - or, alternatively, the modern mainstream assumption that the universe is some mixture of deterministic causes and random events (e.g. some mixture of relativity and quantum theory).

Metaphysics affects everything, sooner or later; because it frames all legitimate questions and dictate the legitimacy of answers.

Mainstream, normal, modern morality is is based on the assumption that everything which happens is either caused or random - and therefore ultimately meaningless and purposeless. By this account, all morality is therefore necessarily and only a matter of feelings; and is indeed a 'projection' of our own subjective feelings onto an uncomprehending and dead universe. Thus (according to mainstream modern metaphysics) things are good or bad, ultimately, because they make us feel good or bad - and this is universalized into a 'moral system' along the (dubious) lines that we feel better or worse when we feel that other people feel better or worse.

(Yes, I am aware that this is not actually 'a morality' - but that is what passes for morality in the public arena - see After Virtue, by Alasdair MacIntyre.).

There is no possibility of genuine moral debate within this modern secular framework, which is why we never see any. We see only assertion and counter assertion of feelings, and the imputation of feelings to various others.

For a Christian this makes honest 'casual' discussion about moral issues (around the water cooler, as it were) impossible - because all casual discussion is non-Christian, indeed anti-Christian, in its basis and tendency. To converse honestly about morality, the modern Christian must define and contrasts his metaphysics - which hardly makes for casual 'water cooler' conversation!

When an 'issue' arises in everyday conversation - such as whether tattoos are a good thing (or, some specific person's particular tattoo), or whether somebody's divorce was a good or bad thing and why, or what should be government policy about uncontrolled mass immigration, or whether some friend has behaved well or badly...Well, the honest Christian is faced with reinforcing, tacitly by participation without clarification, a moral system he deplores - or saying nothing, which dishonest but antisocial.

But I can well recall, when I was an atheist, how absurd it seemed to me to envisage 'a moral universe' - I thought of stars and planets and volcanoes and I could not imagine how they could be part of a moral plan - and since that was most of the universe, then objective morality seemed absurd. Likewise with 'love' - how could love be the most important things (as Christians assert) is most of the universe is dead and non-conscious? At most I could imagine that the whole universe was a means to the end of the Christian God's purposes for humans - but that seemed like an absurd overkill when comparing the size of the universe with the tiny planet earth with its scattering of people.

I was, in sum, trapped by my metaphysical assumptions concerning the nature of reality - and I was trying to 'insert' God into this ready-made modern secular 'universe' (which had, as a matter of historical fact, been constructed so as to render God at best superfluous, and indeed to mainly and specifically to eliminate Him).

It is a great liberation of spirit and source of energy and hope to identify, challenge, recognize the ridiculousness of, then discard the nihilistic metaphysics which we had inculcated by mainstream, secular, modern society - via the mass media, the systems of education, politics, law, by work and bureaucracies... To see that this metaphysics is arbitrary, absurd, unnatural, self-refuting.

And then to realize that I have the power, right and autonomy to replace it with something that is spontaneous, natural and Christian - and to discover (despite my knowledge being radically incomplete and imperfect) that then, suddenly,everything makes sense!

Tuesday, 17 November 2015

There are many aspects to a metaphysical wakeup - such a wakeup being the sudden realization of being self-trapped by deeply held assumptions concerning the nature of reality, the sloughing-off of such assumptions; and the sudden recognition and adoption of alternative possible assumptions.

For example, The Animistic Wakeup.

That would be the recognition that we are killing ourselves (first spiritually, then physically) by our inbuilt assumption that almost everything in the universe is dead (in the sense of unliving, passive, non-conscious, lacking in any purpose) - discarding this assumption - and adopting instead the assumption that everything is alive and (I various ways and to widely varying degrees) conscious and purposive.

Try it as you sit now and look about you - or as you walk somewhere: the effect is utterly remarkable: the world is changed! It is not necessarily a change that will make you happy (that depends on the situation you are in) but it is a change when suddenly life becomes meaning-full and purpose-full and you are no longer lonely but at the centre of a web of uncountable relationships.

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Such a wakeup could happen to you, it could happen en masse.

Many people have the potential for such a wake-up - for example the tens of millions who have been deeply moved and permanently affected by Tolkien, Narnia, Harry Potter and other good fantasy books - these people have this potential latent.

What might make it happen?

Well, part of this metaphysical paradigm shift is the recognition that there are multiple influences that are imperceptible - communications that may affect us at the level of the imagination, but of whose origin we are unaware.

HOWEVER - any such realization must be accepted. And at present when someone has such a realization - it is rejected (nearly always, and en masse).

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IF such a thing happened - to a lot of people, enough people - it would be a cataclysm; one way or another. Things would never be the same again.

There would be (metaphorically) a stepping out of the shadows of (self-) deception and an experience of blinding illumination.

If, r once, this happens, the end of things would commence - because if it was accepted, everything would change; but if it was rejected then this would be a full, aware and conscious choice to embrace despair as Good.

Because this would be nothing less than a realization of our own sins against the light. We would suddenly find ourselves poised upon a knife-edge - with the choice of repenting (which is to say acknowledging the nature and reality of) our sins; or else denying our sins and relabeling them a Good.

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As I say: things would never be the same again: for better, or for (much) worse.

Monday, 16 November 2015

Most people are made nihilists and forced-into despair by their metaphysical assumptions; but these can be changed. First by becmoing aware of them - then by changing them.

For instance people feel that everything in their own minds (and from their own minds) has been caused by something else - that their thoughts, feelings, motives... all have been put-into them - and what comes-out is just a consequence, merely a transformation of what has been put-in.

People will argue that this is so - that theythemselves are really nothing: a mere concentration of processes - an illusion.

But imagine that your mind is an uncaused cause: can cause without being caused.

Imagine that your mind can originate thoughts. Imagine that it is a remarkable entity, not like any machine, not even a super-computer - but a remarkable entity from which things arise that were never put there.

Imagine that your mind does not only process information - but can spontaneously generate it. Thoughts appear - but it cannot be explained from whence they came - they are absolutley incalulable!

It seems a dizzying notion - but for Christians it is literally true, implied by revelation.

It is most valuable for us to learn to exercise our imaginative capability in order to muse upon the possibilities of purpose beyond any we have, as yet, been able to grasp.

For we can notice that in human nature we can withstand almost any difficulties except the loss of a sense of purpose.

We can make do without happiness, comfort and love, if we feel that the reason for doing so is some great purpose.

This will lead us to expect the same principle to apply to all other beings in any other level or classroom in the university. Consequently, if we can deepen, widen and clarify our sense of purpose, it will have a very far reaching effect.

I have often remarked that the number one problem in the modern West is Motivation! Motivation! Motivation! That is we are nihilists; and therefore lack any basis for powerful and sustained motivation - which renders us feeble, cowardly, alienated, and ultimately suicidal.

And it could be argued that our chronic feebleness of motivation is itself a consequence of lack of purpose - because purpose is what potentially generates motivation.

Modern man tends to suppose that purposes are interchangeable, malleable - that we can pick up and put down purposes, direct and then redirect our motivations. But that is not what it looks-like. What it looks like is that we are much better at destroying purpose and weakening motivation than we are at discovering or creating purposes capable of eliciting motivation.

We have done a great job of demolishing serious religion, traditional morality, long-termism in public life.

Government Officials and the managers of institutions and corporations are tremendously adept at eroding professionalism, long termism, inner motivation, honesty - but they can only replace them with sticks and carrots, working to rules and checklists, and a sense of purpose no higher than the latest 'targets' - narrowly and literally interpreted, pursued in a manner that is not-provably-dishonest instead of truthful.

In such a world, where might purpose and motivation emerge from except imagination? And what better function could imagination have than to restore to us that sense of purpose which enables us to withstand almost any difficulties?

I do not regard this as an optional extra - but a core task for modern Man. And within Christianity - we simply must have a Christianity that motivates us and restores purpose, builds-in resilience, sustains courage - else our faith will be so feeble as to become rapidly swamped.

Thus we need more than simply to know, to assent, to learn - we need imaginatively to appropriate our faith: to grasp it with the imagination - and where necessary to seek a Christian explanatory system, practice and community that we can, personally, so grasp and appropriate.

It seems to be a rule, in narrative as well as real life, that when a prophecy comes true and is fulfilled, it will be in some unexpected and surprising fashion. This is the case for the Old Testament prophecies of Christ.

Hence, while some will regard a prophecy as having been-fulfilled, another person may feel that it was fulfilled in some unexpected way - this is, of course, a staple of narrative fiction and myth: that prophecies cannot be eluded, because they are fulfilled in unexpected ways.

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Why? My explanation is that the reason is that prophecies come true not because the future is foreseen, but because the future is influenced such that the prophecy is made to come true.

For example in Psalm 22 of the Authorized (King James) Version of the Bible verses 16-18:

For dogs have compassed me: the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me: they pierced my hands and my feet.
I may tell all my bones: they look and stare upon me.
They part my garments among them, and cast lots upon my vesture.

These predictions are taken to have been fulfilled by Jesus having been nailed, his bones not broken and his possessions having being divided by the onlooking soldiers. But the manner of fulfilment could not have been predicted from the words of the prophecy which does not mention nails, or a cross, or soldiers.

My impression of this, and other, prophecies is that they are not a result of God having (as it were) seen a picture of what would come - but as God having influenced the on-going situation at the time of the crucifixion such that the prophecies were fulfilled.

But what about free will? Suppose that who put Christ on trial had acquitted him? What then? Well, the prophecies, or some of them, would have been fulfilled in some different way - presumably at a later time - by God's direct action.

Suppose some soldier had tried to break Christ's bones? Well, perhaps the bones would not have broken - having been miraculously strengthened by God's will, or perhaps the blow would have missed its mark (after all, the spear thrust into Christ's side was directed such that it - surprisingly - did not break a bone).

Or, perhaps the bones would have broken and that specific prophecy would not have been fulfilled - but others would have.

My point is that - if God wants a prophecy to be fulfilled, He can make it happen - not by coercing human will, but by great knowledge of men, by the multiplicity of possibly pathways and timescales leading to the same outcome, and great direct power of action on things.

It has been fairly common in my life to suppose I had grasped a truth, but for it later to seem incomplete. This can, of course, simply be a consequence of the finite capacity of the mind, in a finite time-span (and a context of distractability among many distractions). But it can be a clue to an inbuilt bias, a one-sidedness of understanding.

This one-sidedness may be necessary, at times - in the sense of there being priorities. For example, life in a context of war tends to be one-sided - and (as long as the situation does not go on too long) this may well be necessary and correct.

And in religion, similarly, there can be crises during which the main priority is to do some specific thing, now and wholeheartedly. For example, there are times when following a particular rule becomes the dominant need.

But there are also times when the pressure is off, and the one-sidedness and radical incompleteness of our religious understanding can become rather painfully apparent - those times when our faith and hopes (even at their best, at the best we can possible imagine) seem like - or are revealed as - incomplete in some basic fashion, radically unsatisfying hence ultimately unsatisfactory... The dry times.

This may be a problem in the self - an inability to appreciate on the part of the person - but it may also be a defect in that person's, or that denomination's, or that church's conceptualization of reality. And there is a tendency among persons, denominations and churches to cry heresy whenever this situation emerges - and most of the time they would be right!

But not always. The compromises necessary in the necessity of a church - the so called institutional aspects of Christianity - create deep problems (as well as been necessary to the survival and thriving of the Faith). In public discourse, it may happen (and it may be best) that the institution will 'double down' on doctrines and dogmas, when these are genuinely inadequate.

And when the inadequacy is genuine, and genuinely felt - then someone may be forced out from the church. And both parties may be correct, in their own way.

Anyway, the answer is that what is theologically wholesome, beneficial, necessary for one individual may be impossible for an institution. I am not talking about sins! but about the way that individuals conceptualize their faith - the focus, the understanding, the priorities, the 'flavour'.

Individuals cannot and should not advocate change on the basis of what they personally need; institutions should not be too rigid about what individuals believe in their personal context, and practice in their private devotions.

The socio-political arena and public discourse are crude and simple and fundamentally unsatisfying - however necessary; the private arena, the individual consciousness, has its idiosyncratic, sometimes unique, needs which can only be denied at the cost of a mutilating deprivation - but which are absolutely unsuitability for generalization as rules and rituals. Ideally, both sides need to be mature enough to know what is their own business, and what is not.

Sunday, 15 November 2015

I have just finished reading (pretty much but not quite) everything written by Jeremy Naydler - a contemporary gardener philosopher whom first I encountered on a video talking about Rudolf Steiner - and whose work on Ancient Egyptian religion I started reading when investigating that subject. So, since August, I have read

Temple of the Cosmos: The Ancient Egyptian Experience of the Sacred Shamanic Wisdom in the Pyramid Texts: The Mystical Tradition of Ancient Egypt

These books are only of interest if the religion of Ancient Egypt is of interest - but Naydler really brings this to life; in the sense that it becomes possible empathically to inhabit the thought world of that religion.

Future of the Ancient World: Essays on the History of Consciousness

This is the book of Naydler's that I would recommend most strongly for most people. The essays cover a range of topics on ancient and modern religion and spirituality - with a strong Steiner influence. There are many important insights and observations. Indeed, Naydler here assumes the mantle of the Owen Barfield of our age - and anyone who has been impressed by Barfield will want to engage with these ideas.

Goethe on Science: A Selection of Goethe's Writings

An excellent little book comprising a selection of paragraphs from Goethe with a commentary. I wish I had encountered these ideas many years ago - since it took me a couple of decades to (more or less) rediscover them for myself.

Gardening as a Sacred Art Soul Gardening

Naydler made his living as a gardener for most of his life. The first is a history of the evolving concepts of what a garden is for, with a look towards the future - fascinating. The second is a pleasing and unpretentious book of verse on themes suggested by gardening - much in the style of Stevie Smith (including naive drawings).

The Advent of the Wearable ComputerThe Quest for the Pearl: Technology and the Crisis of Contemporary CultureThe Struggle for a Human FutureTechnology and the soul (part one): Living in the Shadow of the MachineTechnology and the soul (part two): The Inhuman in our Midst Technology and nature (part one): The Unquenchable Thirst to Live in Gratitude: Digital Technology and the Afflicted Soul of the EarthTechnology and nature (part two): Synthetic Biology: The Assault on the Realm of Life

These booklets, some of which are available as free downloads, can be found at: www.abzupress.co.uk/webcat.htm . Naydler opens-up a important and neglected subject here - the effects of digital technology, the invention (and purpose) of the computer, the development of personal mass media etc on human thinking. I would regard this as work-in-progress - because at present Naydler's analysis is stronger in its diagnosis and descriptions of the nature of the problem, than in its (rather imprecise and uncertain) suggestions for treating (and perhaps solving) the problem.

Altogether, it has been a very cheering experience for me to discover that Naydler has been quietly working away on important topics, living in England (near Oxford).

Since the beginning of 2015 I have therefore made two significant personal discoveries of important, contemporary English people of around my own age who have been doing important work unbeknownst to me; the one other being Susanna Clarke, author of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell.

Since I did not know them, there presumably are others I have yet to discover - which would be nice!

Saturday, 14 November 2015

The average modern intellectual firmly regards Christianity as being like a child's bike fitted with what we in England call 'stabilizers' - or in the US training-wheels.
In sum, they perceive Christianity as constrained by rules fixed by a church (supposedly on behalf of God), and the good Christian as (utterly, but merely) obedient to the rules and a docile servant to the church/ God.
But ultimately, Christianity is not about obedience to rules, and subservience to a monarchical God; ultimately Christianity is about entering into a 'grown up' personal relationship with God as befits our identity as a mature, hence fully-divine, Son or Daughter.
The divine life aims at ultimately becoming an exalted family life - and not the apotheosis of the court of a Byzantine monarch - with God as enthroned Emperor and men and women as a throng of courtiers in perpetual worship.

(This clarification of a chronic ambiguity within Christianity is a consequence of the Mormon Restoration of Christian doctrine - the doctrines relating to marriage, families, the nature of God and the meaning of us being His offspring.)

But if the actual earthly Christianity of rules and authorities, of obedience and repentance for failure to stick by the rule, is not the ultimate - it is essential.
It is essential in the same kind of way that a little bike with training wheels is essential for a five year old to learn to ride: the rules and obedience are not ultimate but they are necessary.
If we perched a five year old atop a grown-up racing bike on a trackway, the child would simply keel over and smash himself onto the hard surface.

We are children and we need, we must now have, a kiddy-bike-with-stabilizers type of Christianity - even if we know that is not our ultimate aspiration - even if the mature Christians on earth can (to some extent) ride without stabilizers. That does not make them hypocrites any more than dispensing with basic finger exercises makes a concert pianist a hypocrite.
But, although the stabilizers are absolutely necessary here and now; we should remember when talking with non-Christians to make sure they know that they are not the end-point of Christian life and hope: we have knowledge of higher things; and faith that someday, with perseverance, we shall cast aside the training wheels, mount a sleek and speedy racer; and joyfully experience new possibilities of exploration and swiftness.

The work of Menelaos Apostolou, a young Assistant Professor from Nicosia University in Cyprus - collected and explored in this recent book, turns-out to be the most significant 'paradigm shift' in the evolutionary psychology of sex since the modern field began in 1979 with Don Symons The evolution of human sexuality.

Apostolou's work means that this whole area of work - many thousands of papers and scores of best-selling books (not to mention the theoretical basis of the online Manosphere and PUA movement) - now need to be reframed within a new explanatory context.

In a nutshell, and with exhaustive documentation and rigorous argument, Apostolou establishes that parental choice is primary in human evolutionary history: for many hundreds of generations of our ancestors it was primarily parents who chose and controlled who their children would marry and reproduce-with; and the individual sexual preferences of both men and women were relegated to a secondary role.

This means that it was mainly parent choice that shaped human mating preferences - and personal choice would have been relegated to a subordinate role within and after marriage (e.g. infidelity choices; and the choice to end marriage - e.g. when to divorce).

Most of this book is taken up by the collection and discussion of a mass of empirical data - hundreds of references, and the detailed working-through of the implications; but the take home message is relatively simple and clear.

Apostolou shows that in most societies in human history, and continuing in most modern societies outside of The West, individual men and women had very little choice of their mates - and that this choice was nearly always made by their parents. In other words, marriages were arranged by the parents of the husband and wife - especially the daughter's marriage, and usually by their fathers more than their mothers.

Parents preferences for a marriage partner differ from those of their offspring. In general, parents (relatively to their children, especially daughter) prefer delaying sexual relationships until an early marriage with early onset of child-bearing and little or no extra-marital sex. And parents have been generally hostile to divorce.

The characteristics parents prefer (compared with individual preferences) include good character, ability to provide resources (especially men), coming from a 'good family' - with high status and wealth, and pre-marital chastity (especially in women).

The characteristics individuals prefer (compared with their parents) include beauty and good looks (hair, face, figure etc. in a woman; muscular physique in a man), a charming and entertaining personality, the ability to provide sexual excitement and so on.

The system of parental sexual choice seems to be unique to humans - which makes it a matter of exceptional biological interest: we may be the only species that has not evolved to choose our own mates.

More exactly, the ancestral system was probably (to simplify) that two sets of parents controlled who their children married - the individual preferences of the prospective husband and wife may or may not have been consulted. Individual choice was probably important mostly after marriage - since there was the possibility of extra-marital liaisons (although Apostolou documents that these were extremely risky, and generally very harshly punished, up to and including death - especially for women).

But all the ancestral societies permitted divorce (while strongly discouraging it - since this undermined parental decisions) - although mainly in a context where one of the spouses turned out to be unsatisfactory from the point of view of providing grandchildren (eg. men who did not provide sufficient resources - due to their behaviour or from illness or injury, or women who were barren). Probably since women are more controlled in arranging marriage, it is mainly women who initiate divorces.

Another way of describing this is that parents screen or filter prospective spouses - and individual preferences only work within this pre-screened and filtered population. Consequently, modern men and women are not adapted to select a partner from an unscreened population - and not equipped with the proper instincts to assist their choice; so they are vulnerable to deception and exploitation.

Therefore human evolutionary history has left modern individuals, in a world where parental choice and control has been all-but eliminated from mainstream life, woefully ill-equipped to manage their sexual lives.

This affects both men and women adversely - but in partly different ways. men and women share a common problem of not being worried-enough about the problem of finding suitable long-term mates, marrying and having children - precisely because this whole business was managed for them by parents through hundreds of preceding human generations.

Women delay and delay marriage and child-bearing, and seem unconcerned about their genetic extinction - because their deep inbuilt expectation is that these matters will be arranged for-them. men worry too much about attaining high status among men, and becoming a good provider - when these were selected for in a world where prospective in-laws wanted these attributes from men; but in the modern world they are an ineffectual strategy for getting a mate.
In sum (and in terms of their biological fitness) modern men are too worried about working hard, and not worried enough about meeting and impressing individual women.

So men and women who are apparently, in biological and historical terms, extremely well-qualified as potential husbands and wives, remain unmarried and childless in large and increasing numbers.

Modern single people therefore are much too happy about their living in a state of unattached childlessness, than is good for their reproductive success. And this (biologically) foolish happiness is at least partly a consequence of evolutionary history: people are behaving as if mating and marriage will be sorted-out by parents - but it isn't.

However, as is usual in works of evolutionary psychology - in a subject where the professionals are almost 100 percent atheists (and militant atheists at that!), in this book there is a too brief and conceptually inadequate consideration of the role of religion.

The subject gets about three pages, and religion is treated as merely a trumped-up rationalisation for enforcing biological imperatives. However, it is not mentioned that in modern societies it is only among the religious that we can find biologically viable patterns of mating, marriage and family - and indeed only among some particular religions that are traditionalist in ethics and patriarchal in structure: which fits exactly with the evolutionary predictions.

My point is that religion needs to be regarded as a cause, not merely a consequence, of sexual behaviour and selection pressure; in sum, religion (more exactly, some specific religions) is the only known antidote to the pattern of maladaptive modern sexuality which is trending towards extinction.

Another omission is the role of intoxication by alcohol and drugs. Much of modern sexual behaviour is initiated in parties, bars and nightclubs; and occurs more-or-less under the influence of intoxicants - and this in itself deranges delicate brain functioning and destroys the benefits of behavioural adaptations that may have taken centuries or millennia to evolve.

An intoxicated person is maladaptive.

So, from a biological perspective, I would contend that there is no reason to suppose we can solve the biological problems of modernity outwith religion (especially since the social system of religion has in practice been replaced by... the mass media - see my book Addicted to Distraction). Biological knowledge can diagnose the problem - but science cannot provide a solution nor the motivation to implement it; since humans are not evolved to structure their sexuality according to biological principles.

We are 'set-up' to seek our own gratification and try to avoid suffering with reproductive success as a by-product - we do not seek directly to achieve optimal personal/ or tribal/ or national/ or species-level reproductive fitness.

Such omissions and other imperfections do not detract from the exceptional originality and importance of this book and the empirical research and theoretical discussion which it summarises.

In a world where actual scientific achievement was the primary determinant of professional success; Menelaos Apostolou would be among the most prestigious, most cited, and most intellectually influential people in evolutionary psychology.

I hope that this deserved outcome will, sooner or later, come to pass.